Lost Item

As an Uber driver, I’ve come across people leaving things in my car. It doesn’t happen much, but when it does I make sure to get those items back to their rightful owners. That’s just the right thing to do. It’s also Uber policy that if a passenger loses something they should contact Uber and let them know so that Uber can let me know and we can connect on when and where to take the lost item, should it be in my possession.

That didn’t happen today. The right way of doing things, I mean. No. Instead, the passenger in question took this to a whole new level. And this is one of the reasons I hate driving for Uber. Luckily I don’t deal with these idiots often.

I picked this guy up from a motel and he immediately told me he worked for Uber in their offices. So we had a good time talking about all the things we hated about the company. I took him to a local mall and dropped him off, then went on my way.

As you can imagine with the lead up I’ve written, he apparently left something in my car, because he called me just a couple minutes after I left to tell me so. He was missing his vape pen. It cost him $100. He said he put it in the pocket in my passenger side door. Why? I have no idea. It’s not like we were going far. And he had a backpack with him. Why wasn’t it put in there?

I paid a lot of money for this. I’m going to randomly stick it in my Uber’s door pockets for no reason. Source

With him on the phone I pulled over, got out, went around to his side, and searched. And searched. And commentated what I was doing as I was doing it. I looked on the back seat floor board, under his seat, in the pocket on the door, in my glove box, in the extra storage compartment above the glove box that Jeep’s have. His vape pen was nowhere to be found. He said he was thinking about it and my car was the only place it could be. I told him I didn’t find it and we hung up.

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Live Friday Nights: Dire Straits – Sultans Of Swing

This jam always rocks my socks.

Uber Fucked Me Over, Again

A couple months ago I was out driving when I picked up a guy and had to take him to Charleston, West Virginia. Sure, that’s a long, four-hour ride. So naturally I was excited because that’s a nice pay day for me, even though I would be on the road for 8 straight hours.

When I got to the location and dropped the guy off, I had very little gas and no money. But that’s okay, Uber’s about to pay me, right? Wrong. Instead of giving me the $240 they predetermined I was going to make, and told me I was going to make, they had to review the ride. When I called them on it they said it could take up to 24 hours to process. I told them I didn’t have 24 hours, I needed to get home, I was in another state, and I had no money or gas. I couldn’t even get a motel room. They claimed to understand totally and began to tell me how the process works of them checking the fare to make sure it was accurate and what not. You know, info I didn’t give two fucks about.

Luckily my wife had my mom wire me $40 so I could fill the tank and drive home.

The fuckery didn’t stop there. When they finally paid me they only gave me $160. When I contacted them they said after they reconfigured what I was supposed to make, they discovered that THAT was what I was supposed to make. So they were $80 off with their own calculations. I wonder how many other drivers they’ve done that to.

That was a few months ago, as I said. Well, they just pulled one over on me again. Thankfully it was for a lot less than $80. But still, they’re really pissing me off.

They had a promotion where if you made 50 trips you were guaranteed $450. If you drove 50 trips and didn’t earn at least that, Uber would make up the difference. Can you guess where this is going?

Today was when I hit the 50 trips. When I started the day I was at 47. Not my counting, that’s what the Uber app told me. I was at 47 of 50 and I was sitting at $420. I thought, depending on the rides, I could easily make $30 on my own and their promotion wouldn’t mean shit to me like all of the other ones they run.

Instead, I got 3 rides and only made $17, so Uber owed me $12. I went to the promotion thing on the app to see what was up and it said I still had one ride to take, which I didn’t. I know what 50 minus 47 is. That’s 3. I can count to 3, and I took 3 rides and that should’ve been that. But it wasn’t, they said I still had one to go.

So I took another ride. And wouldn’t you know it, that still didn’t cover the $30 I had to make to reach $450. I went back to the promotions part of the app to see that particular promotion was gone. Completely gone. Nowhere to be found. My stats were gone, everything. So I guess I’m not making that extra $12. Fantastic.

Fuck you, Uber.

Great Commercials: Haynes Baked Beans – Astronaut

So very, very true.

Live Friday Nights: AC/DC – The Razor’s Edge

This is a hard song to find a live video for. And I’m pretty sure this is the only recording they’ve ever put out playing it live, on cassette, CD, or even DVD. And it rocks.

Strange News Sunday: Guinness Records

I’m bored, so I got on my computer with nothing in mind to do. I checked Facebook, but had just done that from my phone before getting on the PC. Well, laptop. Whatevs.

So then I went to my next go-to thing to do and that is search for strange news for my Sunday schtick. THIS schtick, actually. You see, I look for this stuff constantly. It’s a “strange” obsession. Almost none of my Strange News articles are actually written on Sunday. For instance, it’s currently Monday. But I saw this crap and thought it would be a good one to write, so here we go.

This happened. I went to this website, UPI.com, which I check regularly for strange content, and I saw this listed.

New York Town Breaks Guinness Record For Human Shamrock

What the hell? Guinness takes anything as a record setting/breaking deal. If you can get enough people to go along with your dumbass idea, you can set a Guinness world record and be forever remembered as a Guinness record holder, along with people who actually did shit that was noteworthy. Like who, you ask? I have no idea. I don’t read the Guinness book because I just don’t. If I had one, I probably would. But I know there are people in it who did amazing shit to become a record holder. It was right around the time I saw an episode of Get A Life where Chris Elliott does something really stupid to get in the Guinness Book. I was like 11 years old and I thought, “that’s pretty stupid.”

If you’ve never seen this show, you owe it to yourself to not. It was great. Either you’re a Chris Elliott fan, or you’re not. Source

Ever since then I’ve seen people doing dumb shit and getting in the book. And this is one of them. So what? The record is getting people to stand still for five straight minutes? You know what? It’s cool, it’s neat, I think it looks great. You guys did a good job. But to set a record? Of any kind? It’s not that awesome. They formed a shamrock. Wow. It’s not 3D, or in 4k definition… it’s just a clipart shamrock.

I just shook my head, as I read over the details, and learned that they didn’t set the record, they BROKE the record. That means people before them got together and did it first. That means someone else thought it was an easy enough task, drank enough, and broke the record. Instead of coming up with something original, which should be easy enough considering they’ll take anybody as a record holder, or doing something outstanding, they settled for mediocrity and went with this. So basically they spent money on the green ponchos for 1200 people, paid for an aerial photo/video and got into the Guinness Book of World Records.

I literally thought, “there’s no way people would be this mediocre and become a record holder like this again.” And I scrolled down to see this.

Northern Ireland School Forms Pi Symbol To Break Record

Same story, different picture. Literally. A group of people got together to BREAK a record already set by people who got drunk and had nothing better to do but became record holders anyway.

In the previous story, 1200 people broke a record previously set by 815. In this one, 1170 people broke a record previously set by 847.

Why, you ask? Who cares. It’s not like the Guinness Book is reputable now. Hell, there’s an episode of Nitro Circus where they set so many brand new records in a certain amount of time, which is also a record. It’s cool as hell to watch them do it, and they’re actually doing skillful things to earn these records, not just stand in place for five minutes. But even then after they set all these new records it’s kinda like, “Damn Guinness, not trying very hard now are you?”

So there you go. Four groups of people all with the same thing in mind. Do something terribly mediocre, be put on record for doing it. Maybe I’ll try to create my own record and then do it, like blogging for 24 straight hours or some stupid shit. We’ll see.*

*No, we won’t.